I am the Sea
by RedAugust102
Summary: "Running through my veins. Coursing through my brain. Steaming off my muscles. Swirling through my breath. My heart beats with it. My mind thinks with it. I run with it. I am it. I am the sea." A few one-shots from the point of view of Corr that follow the story of the Scorpio Races.
1. Trapped

**Hello :)**

**This is my first fanfiction ever, so please, I am open to constructive criticism. **

**This story is from the point of view of Corr, Sean's water horse. It is a series of one-shots from different parts of The Scorpio Races. **

**I would love it if you left a review, but I have decided not to be one of those annoying authors that only publish with a certain amount of reviews etc.**

**So, yeah! **

**Also, I don't own anything, the characters and stuff belong to Maggie Stiefvater. :) Enjoy!**

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Running through my veins. Coursing through my brain. Steaming off my muscles. Swirling through my breath. My heart beats with it. My mind thinks with it. I run with it. I am it.

The sea. The sea, the sea, the sea.

I am the sea.

The water weighs me down into the sand, but I still gallop through it, because I am of it. I am _of_ the sea.

I run through the swirling sea, under a sky like the breath of a thunder god. Rain falls to meet the tumbling waves, joining the great, undefeatable, infinite, impossible ocean. The water gets steadily shallower as I move towards the cliffs, where I smell the alluring, although distant, scent of flesh. Finally, I leap out of the water, although it cries out a crash of longing as I leave it behind. Maybe, I would turn slowly, gaze at the powerful waves and rejoin them. Race them over the seabed, and win. But not today. Today I am hungry. Today I will feed.

The sand, weighed down with water, stretches far from the water to the cliffs, the cliffs that herald above the beach, an impressive but feeble attempt of nature to protect the land from the sea. My hooves sink into the cold, cold sand, pools of water forming around my ankles, caressing my skin and calling me back. I gaze back into the ocean, its call humming through my being. This is always the hardest part, leaving the sea. But I am hungry.

I let the tide pull at my hooves just a second longer, then erupt out of the sand to sprint across the beach, revelling in the wind whistling through my mane, the rain flowing down my flanks, and the amazing, unmatchable feeling that comes with running with all your speed, when nothing matters. Not even the sea.

I gallop up to the black rocks that fold over into a small cove, then turn back and zigzag from the cliffs to the water, leaping and pounding and running, running, running.

Then, I stop. My hooves kick up sand as I skid, scanning my surroundings for the source of that smell. That delicious, meaty smell of human flesh. The rain still stings my eyes, and the sea still roars and roars. But I will feed, today. I will feed.

I peer through the wet dark, watching for the distinct shape of a human.

I see it.

Far, far along the beach, in a gash in the cliffs, stands a man.

He is staring at me.

A growl rumbles through my chest, slow and controlled. I begin to trot forward. He still stands, and stares. I quicken my pace, this man unnerves me. He isn't backing down. He should be running, screaming, crying, curling into a ball and sobbing to some non-existent god. Or, yelling to other men, calling for them to capture me, drape me in bells and ropes and drag me to their stables. Those ones are always harder to kill, but more satisfactory, in a way. Yet this man, he stands there. Simply staring at me with eyes that tell me nothing. Rain still pours down my back, and the sea hisses beside me, calling. I ignore it; I have something else to deal with.

I screech into the sky and gallop to the figure. I am hungry.

The man still stands. Yet I am so close. I bare my teeth and rear, ready to strike down and cover the last few metres. He still stands. I regain the ground, and hesitate. Not for long, just a millisecond. A flash in my eyes. A sharp breath. Hardly anything at all. But the man sees.

He sees everything.

Slowly, he lifts an arm and shows me his hand, outstretched. And stares straight into my eyes. I stop. I freeze in the cold sand. The sea stops singing its siren song, or I stop hearing it. I stare back. And step forward. I hear nothing, see nothing, nothing but this man. I don't know why I am stepping towards him so calmly, I don't know what I will do once I reach him. In this step, a million jumbled thoughts rush through my mind like a crashing wave. He might catch me, he might dress me up in those stupid jingles and charms, he might chain me up far from the sea in a tiny stall with no room to run. I think I would die. The sea, the mighty thing that made me, cares for me, is me, and will ultimately end me, would be taken away from me. Running, that simple thing that turns my blood to fire, sharpens all my senses, frees my mind from the sea, and makes me feel so, so alive, will no longer be known to me. I _would_ die.

Quicker than lightning, he pulls a rope from around his neck and throws it around my neck. I read up and kick at the air, screeching. He has me. I let my guard down and now he has me. I snap at the man ferociously, maybe I can at least take a chunk out of him. He slips away like rain and pulls something out of his pocket. My blood goes cold as he runs it across my flank. I shiver. I pull unrelentingly at the rope as the man leads me up the cliffs. He remains strong and unfazed, even after I manage to bruise his side with a hoof.

He has me.

The seas croons from down below in the black, and although I strain to return to it, I cannot. This man and his iron and his rope has me trapped. The sea will be gone from me, I will run no more.

I will die.

I put all that is in me to escape the tight hold of this human. Simple touches of my flank with the iron and knots in my mane lessen but do not extinguish the raging fire in my mind.

I don't know how long my death walk takes, my mind rages and my body fights and my voice screeches, so I lose all sense of time and solidity. A broken toe, bruised rib and bitten hand are just a few of the injuries that I deal the man when he attempts to force me in a stable. I vaguely hear others of my kind screaming back to me, echoing my now desperate pleas. After a long, long battle, the man manages to force me into a pen. I scream louder than ever, for I hear the sea crooning back to me through a small window, calling for my soul. But I cannot go to it.

I spin around my prison, which is bigger than I expected. I kick at the walls and wail, sending all of my anger, despair and longing into the air as a long, raw screech of my soul. I am trapped.

I scream, and scream, and scream, glaring mercilessly at the man when he stops at the entrance to my pen. He simply gazes into my eyes, and I see something there that surprises me. I see myself, mirrored in him. He longs for the same thing I do, freedom. He wants to be free, just as I do. And I see something else in his eyes, a kind of love. Not for me, but for what I am. He loves the sea.

I think that I stop screaming and kicking. I think that I stand there and stare into the man's eyes. I am not sure. But I also think that we stand there, locked together by some deeper connection, for a long time. I think that he talks to me, with human words that have no meaning, and with tones that are full of it.

He disappears with the rising sun, leaving me to gaze out the window at the ocean.

The sea is gone to me now, lost. And I am lost to the sea.

I have no hope of running again freely, enjoying the weightless, pure ecstasy of pounding across the land.

I am trapped.

I wish to be free.

I am dead.

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**So, there you go! I would love it if you reviewed, but its okay if you don't. I promise i won't be offended :)**

**Constructive criticism is warmly welcomed!**

**-RA102**


	2. Corr

A/N

Chapter number two! Some new things in this one- all is explained in the a/n at the end.

Sorry it's a bit short. This is really just setting the scene for when I start writing the actual events in the book.

I don't own anything.

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I am running.

Running.

My mane whips and whirls, my breath pants and puffs, my heart races and rages.

Electricity pulses through me, working my muscles, sharpening my senses and dimming the constant call of the sea.

I am alive.

The young man, who has grown from that time on the beach, long ago, sits confidently on my back. His heart beats with mine, and our voices sing together. We run and run faster than sound, or light, or comprehension. I feel free. So does he.

A shout dances through the wind, somehow reaching both my and my rider's ears.

"Kendrik!" Is what it sounds like, mutilated by the rushing air. The other men seem to address my rider with that sound, but I don't fully know what it means.

Kendrik twitches the reins and I slow down, but we have been riding together so long that he doesn't really need to.

I trot in a circle and head towards the source of the shout.

The man stands amidst the scrub, eyeing us. It is the jealous one, the resentful one, the one with the evil gleam. Serr, is how most refer to him. Not Kendrik, though. He avoids addressing Serr directly.

Serr steps forward as I slow to a walk, raising a hand to Kendrik. His eyes have not lost their malicious gleam.

He says a few words to my rider, words that sound friendly but are contradicted by his tense air. He makes a sound like "Skorpio" somewhere in the middle, and my ears prick up. The Skorpio is the time when I come alive, when I race with others of my kind, proving my worth to the sea, and proving my superiority to the other sea spirits. I am king amongst us, however tainted by y years on the land.

Kendrik replies with a single, stiff syllable, a response that causes the gleam in Serr's eye to harden into a dull, metallic shimmer. He mutters a condescending string of grunts, and lifts his hand to slap my flank. It burns my skin, not a particularly hard hit, but one that leaves a mark in my mind more than my body.

I rear and kick, I feel a need to hurt Serr. It blocks out the sea and wind.

I smell his flesh and feel hunger, tainted with something else unnameable that has something to do with Kendrik. I will kill this man and feast on his soul.

Serr backs away, making a high, rumbling, evil sound that is somehow also delight. I screech at him, jerking my hooves. The sea, down below, calls for me, adding to my bloodlust. Food. Food is here.

But then a voice mutters in my ear; Kendrik. It is soothing, but also promising, like I will get a chance to hurt Serr one day. I set my feet down, feeling Kendrik tying knots in my mane, calming my mind.

I calm myself, too, glad that Kendrik doesn't use on me the silly bells and trinkets that the others do on their sea spirits. Serr tried them once, and the resulting whispers in my head, scrambling of my mind, and separation from the sea was maddening.

I am still stiff and tense, pulsing with hunger and a wanting for spilt blood.

Kendrik leads me away from Serr's retreating figure, towards the cliff's edge. He dismounts me then, and stands by me, gazing out at the waves.

They rise and fall and hiss and crash and push and pull and swirl and dance and run, run, run trough the darkening water. That is what I was, what I used to be. Now, I run on land, with the wind and the sand and the sky and Kendrik.

It strikes me, suddenly, that when I was the sea I would not have hesitated to turn and tear at Kendrik, to eat his flesh and leave his remains on the rocks and run and leap from the cliff into the sea.

But now, his presence comforts me, in a way that makes the sea laugh and sneer.

Kendrik is so like me, so like the sea spirits. He is of the land, but has grown into the sea. I am of the sea, but have grown into the land. We both long for something we can't have, freedom to do and be anything and everything. He does not waste time or thoughts on human folly. We are so similar, and I feel such a deep connection with him that it shames me, to be so attached to a thing of the land.

Kendrik has thoughts of a similar theme running through his eyes as he shifts his gaze to me.

"Corr." He whispers.

I am Corr. He named me. Corr. It is a harsh sound, a rumbling, sharp, back of the throat sound. It is me. It is the sea, and the land, and the wind, and the sand, and the sky. Mostly, the sea. It has something of Kendrik, he named me. He made me what I am, without lessening what I was before, and giving me room to be more.

I am the sea.

I am the wind.

I am Corr.

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A/N

There. Chapter two.

As you can see, water horses are horrible spellers. Kendrik is obviously Sean. Serr is Sir, referring to Mutt Malvern. Sea Spirits are Capaill Uisce, that's their name for themselves. And the Skorpio refers to the Scorpio Races.

Yup there you go. I would love if you dropped me a review *hint hint*

Oh god that was horrible. You see, I have no subtlety.

Bye for now,

-RA102


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